Why Can't I Be You

by Melissa Walker

  “Oh, right,” says Mom. “Is she staying for the summer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You get along with her, don’t you?” asks Mom as she takes a left into Twin Pines.

  “I don’t know,” I say, mumbling a little. But then I can’t hold it in. “She seems older than thirteen. She’s shopping for bikinis with Brianna and she talks about getting a car and she wears a lot of makeup and she’s the one who planned the girl-boy pool party.”

  I don’t mention the kissy face at Ronan, and I’m trying to give Mom a list of bad things about Eden, but when I hear the things out loud they don’t seem too terrible.

  “That sounds like thirteen to me,” says Mom as she pulls into our pine-needle-covered parking spot.

  “Well, I think she’s not quite thirteen,” I say, pouting.

  Mom turns off the engine and puts her hand under my chin. “Hey, this girl really rattled you, didn’t she?”

  I frown. It’s annoying that Eden “rattled” me.

  “Are you nervous about the pool party?” Mom asks, which is also annoying because no. I hang out with boys all the time. Well, if Ronan counts.

  “Forget it,” I say. “You had to be there. I’m just saying she seems like trouble.”

  “Hey, Claire,” says Mom, sitting back but not opening her door yet. “What’s our motto?”

  I sigh. “We may know other people’s bathrooms, but we don’t know their real stories.” It’s a cleaning lady thing Mom learned.

  “Right.”

  “But she was bragging about how she hangs out with famous people in Nashville and—”

  “Do I need to find you something to do this summer?” asks Mom. “Maybe come to work with me or figure out a way to sign up for a few days of camp? I’m sure it’s not too late.”

  I shut my mouth and shake my head. “No, Mom.”

  “Boredom sometimes makes small things seem more dramatic,” says Mom.

  I nod. “Okay,” I say. I don’t want to risk losing my entire free summer just because some girl was wearing eyeliner and frosted pink lipstick.

  In the evening, while Mom is making dinner, I tell her I’m going for a walk. She knows that’s code for getting online, since I have to go up to Cleland Cemetery for a good signal, but it’s also not a lie: I’m walking up there.

  I peek over at Ronan’s trailer. The main door is open to let a breeze in through the screen, and I see the flicker of the TV in the living room. I’m pretty sure Mr. Michaels’s shadow is in its usual spot. I haven’t seen him outside since that morning when he was zombie-shuffling. I wonder if he only moves to go to the bathroom. Weird.

  I wave to Mrs. Gonzalez when I walk past her trailer. She’s leaning on her porch rail, smiling and talking to Mr. Brewster, who’s smiling and leaning on his rail too. I notice that Mrs. Gonzalez’s thick bun is looser than usual, lower in the back. There are a few gray-black strands falling around her tan face, and it makes me wonder if she’s younger than I thought. Maybe even the same age as Mr. Brewster, who has strong arms and a thick beard that’s mostly still brown. He wears plaid shirts with the sleeves cut off and his pants have cargo pockets that always look full. He jingles when he walks. I wave to him too, and he raises his soda can in my direction.

  See, if we had bigger porches they could sit together.

  When I get to the top of the hill and see three bars on my phone, I sit down by the oak tree and open the app I’m not supposed to have to search for Nash_Queen. I find her right away, because her profile photo is all pretty hair and sunglasses, and—whoa—she has, like, a thousand followers. Also, she’s the first kid I’ve seen whose profile isn’t private. Of course.

  I click through to see a few of her photos bigger. There’s a selfie with a brunette playing a guitar in the background, and from the comments—there are, like, fifty—I can tell it’s some famous country singer. Lots of “omg so jel” stuff is written, and for some reason I’m loading all of them, trying to peek into Eden’s social life.

  After twenty minutes I feel a little queasy, and I click back to Eden’s main page to find her start date. February. I remember how she told Brianna Everything changes in seventh grade.

  Chapter 9

  The gourmet cooking store is empty on a Tuesday. Ronan and I took the bus to the mall this morning, and we plan to spend the whole day inside. I can’t always get him to come here with me, but today it’s nearly a hundred degrees and the mall has really good air conditioning.

  We go to the cooking store first. They do lots of demonstrations, and today’s free samples include a raspberry-mango smoothie made by a very shiny blender, fresh guacamole crushed in a black-stone bowl that costs forty dollars, and some crackers that have herbs baked into them. Not bad for a late-morning snack.

  “Brianna will be sad she missed the smoothie,” I say. When Brianna and I come to the mall, we mostly do the fancy dresses thing and sample makeup. Well, she samples, and I look at all the color names to pick favorites. Currently holding the top spot: Essie’s Roarrrrange nail polish. But I texted Brianna a You free today? this morning, and she hasn’t replied, so it’s just me and Ronan. The mall has a different vibe with him, but it’s not bad.

  When we finish snacking, we stroll past the toy store we used to spend hours in. It has a giant train track, complete with tiny village houses and little people, in the center. We both slow our walk. Then we smile at each other.

  “Should we?” I ask. It seems silly to go play with toys when we’re eleven, but Ronan’s grin tells me he’s as into it as I am.

  While I make the bridge higher and arrange more complex signals for the train to pass through, Ronan reorganizes the people. Little kids have fun with this setup, but often the firefighters end up at the schoolhouse instead of near their truck, and the tiny dog gets separated from its owner, things like that. So Ronan puts the people and village structures in their rightful places. Technically we’re not playing, but getting things back in order.

  “They should pay us to do this,” Ronan says as he sits the lifeguard into her little raised bench by the lake area. “That would be the greatest job.”

  “The greatest job is naming makeup colors,” I say, flashing to Eden and her rosy lips again. Pink Peeve.

  “Not for me!” says Ronan, laughing.

  “Hey, what did you think of Eden?” I ask Ronan before I lose my nerve. I have to admit that I’d be happy if he said he thought she was snobby or annoying. But instead he says, “She seems cool this year.” And he gets this look on his face like he’s entering a dream or something.

  I purposely drop a heavy track from the bridge I’m working on, and the crash makes him snap out of it. Then I change the subject.

  “So is your dad into gardening?” I say. Because I saw him outside again, poking at the dirt bed near their trailer, and I wondered if maybe he was going to plant something like Mrs. Gonzalez has.

  Ronan shrugs and doesn’t look at me, and I know that means I shouldn’t ask more, but Mr. Michaels has been home for a while now and Ronan hasn’t said anything at all about how it is to have his dad back.

  “Do you think you guys will go to the lake this summer?” I ask, because I remember that being a thing that Ronan and his dad sometimes did when Ronan was little. Before Mr. Michaels left.

  I watch Ronan lift up a small kitten piece from the back of a train car and place it in the basket next to the mother cat figure. He shrugs but he doesn’t answer out loud. So I stop asking questions.

  After we finish with the train set—all pieces safe in their proper spots and tracks fully functional—we wave to the lady at the counter, and I say, “Thanks for letting us play!”

  “That’s what it’s there for!” she says, not seeming to notice that we’re almost twelve and not six. Sometimes grown-ups have no idea how old kids are.

  Next, we hit this gift store called Quirk, and it’s the perfect place to shake off the serious quiet that happened. I read the funny greeting cards and copy down lines f
rom a few of the best ones in my notebook, which is the only way I ever steal. Who wants to spend five dollars on a card when you can make your own and adults think that’s even better? But I can always use help with my messages.

  “Booolah!” Ronan comes around the corner wearing crazy, bloodshot googly eyes and makes me jump and then crack up laughing. His fake eyeballs hang from the joke glasses, bouncing up and down on slinky springs.

  “Stop plagiarizing,” he says when he sees my notebook.

  “I’m being resourceful and thrifty,” I tell him.

  “Well, on my birthday I want a card with words by you, not”—he turns over the back of the card I’m looking at—“American Greetings.”

  “Fine, fine,” I tell him. “I promise you’ll get an original Claire Ladd.”

  He nods, satisfied, and we walk out to the center of the mall where there’s a stand selling sunglasses. I think about Brianna’s pool party, and I decide I need some. I try on a few frame shapes and settle on a heart-shaped pair with pink around the edges. They’re cute, and Ronan says he likes them. Plus, they’re in the five-dollar bin. Score!

  After I buy them, Ronan puts his hand into his pocket and makes a jingly sound. “Lions?”

  “Lions.”

  We walk to the middle of the mall, where there’s a small pool with a fountain that pours out of the mouths of two lion statues that look like they’re having a spitting contest. I think they’re supposed to look fierce, or maybe regal, but to me they look a little silly. Anyway, we’ve been wishing in it since we were tiny. Ronan hands me two pennies.

  “How many did you bring?” I ask him.

  “Three,” he says. “It’s all I could find in the couch. I think my dad’s been cleaning it out.”

  Usually Ronan recovers at least ten coins from between the cushions. I never bring anything, because Mom puts all her spare change in a jar in the kitchen and I don’t like to dip into it. Ronan’s couch money has always felt more takable.

  I’m about to close my eyes and make a wish when I look at Ronan’s face and see his expression change. He’s staring over my shoulder with a strange smile.

  When I turn, I see Justin Alonzo and Daniel Jacobson from school, but I quickly face Ronan again because I don’t want to say hi. Daniel used to flick Brianna’s elbow last year in math until he got in trouble, and since then he’s been rude to both of us because we told on him. But seriously, if someone is flicking you all the time and you’ve already asked him to stop and he doesn’t, what choice do you have? The thing about flicking is that it’s a tiny movement that’s not noticeable to teachers, but it can really hurt. So it’s like the perfect secret-bully move. That’s who Daniel Jacobson is. A secret bully. Justin has never seemed that bad, but he’s always with Daniel, so that makes him guilty by friendship.

  Ronan’s unfamiliar smile gets even bigger. “Hey, guys!” he says in a loud voice.

  I turn again, and I spot Emily Wu and Gwen Forester walking with Daniel and Justin. What is Ronan doing? They’re all popular in our grade. We’ve known them forever, of course, and I don’t really understand how suddenly some people seem more famous at school than others, but that has definitely happened for this crowd. The girls aren’t mean to us or anything, they’re just . . . not our people. They see us, but they won’t talk to us.

  “You guys, hi!” Emily says brightly, coming over to the fountain. Okay, I was wrong. The rest of them follow, and Justin and Daniel give Ronan head nods like boys do.

  Emily talks fast and moves her hands a lot. Ronan and I both lean back slightly to make room for her gestures. She’s standing close. “How are your summers so far?” she asks. And before either of us can answer she says, “Ronan, I just found you online. You finally have a profile.”

  Ronan laughs. “I know, right? Finally.”

  I squint at his face. His voice sounds weird. Clear and crisp and loud.

  Gwen and Emily turn to me then. “Are you guys, like, here together?” Gwen asks.

  “I mean, we’re both here,” I say. I know what she means, but it’s an annoying question. At the same time, Ronan says, “Nonono, just hanging out.”

  “So are you coming to the movies?” asks Emily.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I thought maybe Brianna texted you,” she says. “Oh, there she is!”

  I turn again and see Brianna and Eden striding toward us, and a small, sharp pain stabs my stomach. I zero in on Brianna, blocking out the rest of the mall, because in a flash, like milliseconds, I put it together that my best friend is meeting spinning-top Emily and Gwen and Justin and Daniel-the-Flicker to go to the movies and she didn’t invite me! I think I see Brianna’s face wobble slightly, but then Eden starts talking and it’s like a giant spotlight has moved onto her.

  “Hey, I’m Brianna’s cousin Eden,” she says to no one and everyone.

  Emily does the introductions, and I notice she’s staring up at Eden with an awe I haven’t seen from her before, but when she gets around to me and Ronan, Eden says, “We know each other.” Then Eden smiles at me and says, “I didn’t know you guys were going to be here.”

  “I think everyone’s surprised.” I’m looking at Brianna when I talk. Her hair is down again, and I notice she’s wearing a new white sundress along with what must be new red ballet flats—I’ve never seen them. She’s also suddenly very interested in the mall’s fake marble floors.

  Justin’s giant sneaker is making a loud noise as he kicks the base of the fountain like he’s antsy.

  “You guys are cousins?” asks Daniel. “You don’t look alike.”

  “My dad’s black,” says Eden. She flashes a bright-lipped smile at him, but when he looks away I see her smile drop.

  “Guys, let’s go,” says Emily. “The show starts soon.”

  “What are you seeing?” asks Ronan, like this is all normal.

  “The new Selena Gomez movie,” says Eden.

  “I love her,” both Gwen and Emily say at once, as Justin and Daniel grunt. If they don’t want to go to the movie, why are they even here?

  “Want to come with?” Gwen’s looking at Ronan.

  “Sorry, can’t,” he says, but he doesn’t say why. We counted our money earlier, and we plan to split a slice of pizza for lunch after we make wishes in the fountain.

  “Too bad,” says Eden, and she pouts a little. Her lips are more orangy today. Cruel Coral.

  Gwen’s still looking at Ronan when she says, “But you’ll be at Brianna’s party, right?”

  And that is when my jaw finally drops. How big is this birthday party?

  Brianna must know what I’m thinking because this time when I look over at her, she meets my eyes and gives me a cringing smile. The little stabbing pain in my stomach gets more intense.

  “Definitely, I’ll be there,” says Ronan. Like I’m not even here.

  “Cool, see you soon then,” says Emily, and I hear Brianna say a quiet “bye,” but her back is already turning to me, joining the crowd of six who are walking away from us, toward the movie theater.

  I open my palm and realize that I’ve been gripping my pennies crazy hard—they made indentations in my palm. I fling them both into the fountain without even making a wish.

  Chapter 10

  My dad picks us up from the mall. He texted to say he got off work early and he checked in with Mom about taking me out to dinner. I told him Ronan was with me, and he got that I meant we’ll all be doing dinner together.

  I’m extra glad, because I don’t want to think about Brianna anymore and my dad is the kind of fun that usually makes me forget bad feelings.

  The three of us hit a fast-food place, and I almost order the kiddie meal with the toy because they’re featuring some of my favorite characters right now, but when Ronan goes for a regular-size combo I decide to too. What will I do with the toys anyway?

  “You been to any baseball games this year, Ronan?” asks my dad when we sit down in our booth. Minor League Baseball is a big thing in
our area, and sometimes Ronan’s mom gets tickets.

  “No, sir,” says Ronan. “Mom’s working a lot.”

  “Well, maybe your father will take you now that he’s home,” says my dad, and I tense up a little because I’m not sure how Ronan will react.

  “Maybe,” says Ronan, concentrating hard on his burger.

  Dad quickly speaks again. “Or I will! I’d love to see a game with you. Claire always gets bored by the fourth inning and wants to leave.”

  “Dad!” I protest.

  “It’s true, Clairebear,” he says. “Popcorn gets you through the first inning, then a hot dog, then cotton candy, and you’re done. My wallet is flat as a pancake and I don’t even get to see half the game!”

  Ronan looks at me and cracks a smile.

  “Well, it takes so long for them to play,” I say, grinning back at him. “Just finish already!”

  “She’s more a basketball fan,” says Ronan to my dad. It’s true.

  “That she is, Ronan, that she is.” Dad ruffles my hair, and I’m glad to be here with them right now, and glad that Dad knew how to make a joke and fix the bad feeling that was at the table for a minute, the one that had to do with Mr. Michaels.

  But when we get back to Twin Pines and he’s dropping us off, Dad says, “Claire, I’m going to be out of town next Friday. Ask your mom if we can switch and I can see you on Sunday?” He smiles and winks at me. “We’ll go fishing, okay?”

  I scowl at him. “Why can’t you talk to her?”

  “I’ve got to get home,” he says, still smiling. “I’ll text her later to confirm, but can you just let her know we need to switch days?”

  “Fine.” I close Charlie’s door extra hard and it slams.

  Ronan raises his eyebrows at me as Dad drives away.

  “I know,” I say. “It’s like they expect me to go between them all the time. Why can’t they just talk to each other?”

  I wait for Ronan to agree with me, but he doesn’t move, and he doesn’t say anything.